Wednesday, July 27, 2011

TEL AVIV — Skittish at first, then wide-eyed with delight, the women and girls entered the sea, smiling, splashing and then joining hands, getting knocked over by the waves, throwing back their heads and ultimately laughing with joy.

Most had never seen the sea before.

The women were Palestinians from the southern part of the West Bank, which is landlocked, and Israel does not allow them in. They risked criminal prosecution, along with the dozen Israeli women who took them to the beach. And that, in fact, was part of the point: to protest what they and their hosts consider unjust laws.

In the grinding rut of Israeli-Palestinian relations — no negotiations, mutual recriminations, growing distance and dehumanization — the illicit trip was a rare event that joined the simplest of pleasures with the most complex of politics. It showed why coexistence here is hard, but also why there are, on both sides, people who refuse to give up on it.

“What we are doing here will not change the situation,” said Hanna Rubinstein, who traveled to Tel Aviv from Haifa to take part. “But it is one more activity to oppose the occupation. One day in the future, people will ask, like they did of the Germans: ‘Did you know?’ And I will be able to say, ‘I knew. And I acted.’ ”

Such visits began a year ago as the idea of one Israeli, and have blossomed into a small, determined movement of civil disobedience.

Ilana Hammerman, a writer, translator and editor, had been spending time in the West Bank learning Arabic when a girl there told her she was desperate to get out, even for a day. Ms. Hammerman, 66, a widow with a grown son, decided to smuggle her to the beach. The resulting trip, described in an article she wrote for the weekend magazine of the newspaper Haaretz, prompted other Israeli women to invite her to speak, and led to the creation of a group they call We Will Not Obey. It also led a right-wing organization to report her to the police, who summoned her for questioning.

In a newspaper advertisement, the group of women declared: “We cannot assent to the legality of the Law of Entry into Israel, which allows every Israeli and every Jew to move freely in all regions between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River while depriving Palestinians of this same right. They are not permitted free movement within the occupied territories nor are they allowed into the towns and cities across the green line, where their families, their nation, and their traditions are deeply rooted.

“They and we, all ordinary citizens, took this step with a clear and resolute mind. In this way we were privileged to experience one of the most beautiful and exciting days of our lives, to meet and befriend our brave Palestinian neighbors, and together with them, to be free women, if only for one day.”

The police have questioned 28 Israeli women; their cases are pending. So far, none of the Palestinian women and girls have been caught or questioned by the police.

The beach trip last week followed a pattern: the Palestinian women went in disguise, which meant removing clothes rather than covering up. They sat in the back seats of Israeli cars driven by middle-aged Jewish women and took off headscarves and long gowns. As the cars drove through an Israeli Army checkpoint, everyone just waved.

Earlier, the Israelis had dropped off toys and equipment at the home of one of the Palestinian women, who is setting up a kindergarten. The Israelis also help the Palestinian women with medical and legal troubles.

Israel’s military, which began limiting Palestinian movement into Israel two decades ago to prevent terrorism at a time of violent uprisings, is in charge of issuing permits for Palestinian visits to Israel. About 60,000 will be issued this year, twice the number for 2010 but still a token amount for a population of 2.5 million. Ms. Hammerman views the permits as the paperwork of colonialist bureaucrats — to be resisted, not indulged. Others have attacked her for picking and choosing which laws she will and will not obey.

The Palestinian visitors came with complicated histories. In most of their families the men have been locked up at some point. For example, Manal, who had never been to the sea before, is 36, the mother of three and pregnant; five of her brothers are in Israeli prisons, and another was killed when he entered a settler religious academy armed with a knife.

She brought with her an unsurprising stridency. “This is all ours,” she said in Tel Aviv. She did not go home a Zionist, but in the course of the day her views seemed to grow more textured — or less certain — as she found comfort in the company of Israeli women who said that they, too, had a home on this land.

Another visitor lives in a refugee camp with her husband and children. Her husband’s family does not approve of her visits (“ ‘How can you be with the Jews?’ they ask me. ‘Are you a collaborator?’ ”) but she did not hide the relief she felt at leaving her overcrowded camp for a day of friends and fun.

The beach trips — seven so far — have produced some tense moments. An effort to generate interest in a university library fell flat. An invitation to spend the night met with rejection by Palestinian husbands and fathers. Home-cooked Israeli food did not make a big impression. And at a predominantly Jewish beach, a policeman made everyone nervous.

So, on this latest visit, the selected beach was one in Jaffa that is frequented by Israeli Arabs. Nobody noticed the visitors.

Dinner was a surprise. Hagit Aharoni, a psychotherapist and the wife of the celebrity chef Yisrael Aharoni, is a member of the organizing group, so the beachgoers dined on the roof of the Aharonis’ home, five floors above stylish Rothschild Boulevard, where hundreds of tents are currently pitched by Israelis angry with the high cost of housing. The guests loved Mr. Aharoni’s cooking. They lighted cigarettes — something they cannot do in public at home — and put on joyous Palestinian music. As the pink sun set over the Mediterranean, they danced with their Israeli friends.

Ms. Aharoni was asked her thoughts. She replied: “For 44 years, we have occupied another country. I am 53, which means most of my life I have been an occupier. I don’t want to be an occupier. I am engaged in an illegal act of disobedience. I am not Rosa Parks, but I admire her, because she had the courage to break a law that was not right.”

These are tough economic times for the nation and for Virginia. Like the federal and all other state governments, the Commonwealth has been cutting costs wherever it can, and our citizens are feeling the effects of these cuts. In May, Governor McDonnell sent an e-mail to all state employees, asking for our suggestions on ways of saving money.

Just as cuts are necessary in tough times, it also makes sense to make a special effort to encourage investment from outside the Commonwealth. The Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) exists specifically for this purpose, and its website justifiably boasts that more than 700 internationally owned businesses from 45 countries operate in Virginia, have over the past 10 years invested $5.6 billion and employ more than 150,000 Virginians.

Against this background, it is puzzling that the Commonwealth has a separate advisory board to encourage investment from only one of the 190-plus countries in the world, apparently duplicating the work of the VEDP. That country is Israel — the 18th-largest foreign investor in Virginia. (Israeli companies have over the past decade created 1,134 new jobs in the state, less than 0.8 percent of the total number of jobs attributable to foreign investors.)

According to its website, the Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB) shows potential Israeli investors "how operating in Virginia will provide a host of opportunities for your business and make you successful." Last year, the VIAB cost Virginia taxpayers $134,173, including a salary of $85,225 for its director (itemized on the publicly available list of state employees and their salaries).

What is puzzling, though, is why — in times when the Commonwealth us cutting back on core services such as education and health care — it is spending more than $134,000 for an advisory board focusing on only one country. There is no special office to encourage investments from Japan, our largest foreign investor, nor for any of the other top 10 investors in the state. Only Israel warrants a special state advisory board.

This all raises two important sets of issues. The first relates specifically to Virginia's budget. Supporters of the VIAB argue that it has more than paid for itself in the investments it has brought to Virginia. If that is indeed the case, and the VIAB model works, then surely we should be sparing no effort to set up similar advisory boards for other countries — or at the very least for the 17 countries that invest more in Virginia than Israel does.

If VIAB is redundant, then eliminate it. If it works, duplicate its approach in attracting investment from other countries. Either way, the Commonwealth would benefit economically.

The second issue is specific to Israel. Why and how did the commonwealth select Israel alone for special treatment, and the promotion of Israeli investments? Some of the country's policies and practices, particularly with regard to the occupation of the Palestinian territories, are in clear violation of international law (and recognized as such by the rest of the world, including the U.S.). Have any of the investors VIAB has worked with operated in the illegally occupied territories?

If Virginia chooses to have a special relationship with Israel, and to have a well-paid director of the VIAB on its official payroll, taxpayers at least deserve a clear explanation of why this is the case.

Donald Rallis is an associate professor of geography, Nabil Al-Tikriti is associate professor of history, and Ranjit Singh is associate professor of political science and international affairs, all at the University of Mary Washington.

Saturday, July 09, 2011

As you read this human story, keep in mind the names of a few others that Israel has recently denied entry to the occupied Palestinian territory: Prof. Noam Chomsky, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 39th President of the United States Jimmy Carter, Prof. Norman Finkelstein, Judge Richard Goldstone, United Nations Special Rapporteur Richard Falk, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire...and many more common folk.

We must also not forget the thousands of internally displaced Palestinians living INSIDE Israel where ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages such as Iqrit, Bir'am and al-Ghabsiyya got several Israeli High Court decisions (in the 50's) permitting them to return home, which for them is literally dozens of meters away from where they currently live, only to be denied their right to return home by the Israeli military. So much for the Israeli (in)justice system.

Everyone will come home, eventually,

Sam

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Haaretz - Published 14:02 01.07.11

Twilight Zone / Separation anxiety

Because Israel has prevented any form of family unification in the territories since 2009, mothers and fathers are torn from each other and from their children.

By Gideon Levy

A few days ago, the Allenby Bridge between Jordan and the West Bank was again the site of one of those almost routine heartrending scenes about which Israelis are blissfully ignorant. Exactly two weeks ago, Nasser Daoud accompanied his wife and their four children to the border crossing. The wife and mother, Manal Mahamra, was returning with the children to their home in the village of Al-Karmel in the south Hebron hills. Nasser, the husband and father, was parting from them for another year of tears, sadness, longing, wrenching phone calls and worry. Just before they were separated, the father promised he would join the family soon.

Just after the parting, the only daughter, Dana, a lovely girl of 10, implored one of the officers on the Israeli side of the bridge: "Uncle, bring my father." But Dana knew, her father knew and the Israeli uncle-officer knew, too, that Dana's begging would fall on deaf ears and an even deafer heart. Israel prohibits their father from living at home with them. Manal Mahamra and family - Daniel Bar-Or - July 2011

Since the current right-wing government took power in Israel, family unifications in the West Bank have stopped. Hardly anyone writes about this, no one takes an interest, but under cover of that lack of public interest, this draconian measure has sealed the fate of many families: to be torn apart. There are no statistics on the subject, because families have simply stopped applying, knowing there is no chance the application will be granted. Some families have abandoned their homes and relatives in the West Bank and moved to Jordan; the others continue to live a fragmented life in the West Bank, mothers and fathers cut off from their partners and from their children.

The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that the right to family life is a basic right and an integral element of human dignity, but that fundamental declaration crashes on the rocks of Israeli occupation policy.

Immediately after the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel conducted a population census in the West Bank; anyone who was absent on the day of the census lost the right to live in the West Bank. For example, Nasser Daoud's father, from the town of Yatta. He had just completed his studies at a Jordanian university, and five days before the outbreak of the war he went to Amman to collect his B.A. diploma. Unfortunately for him, he was not at home on the critical day, and therefore was fated to spend the rest of his life in exile, along with tens of thousands of others.

He moved to Kuwait, where his son Nasser was born. In the first years of the occupation, first-degree family unification was allowed, but stricter rules came into force after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The approach was that the residents of the territories are in principle not entitled to family unification, and the handful of approvals that were given nonetheless, were considered by the occupying power as acts of gracious kindness.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Jerusalem-based Hamoked - Center for the Defense of the Individual submitted a series of petitions to the High Court of Justice demanding family unification, following which an arbitrary quota was laid down: at first 2,000 approvals a year, then 4,000. The subsequent Oslo accords contained explicit Israeli recognition of what should be self-evident: that marriage justifies family unification.

When the second intifada erupted, in the fall of 2000, Israel completely stopped dealing with all such requests. After the Palestinian elections in 2006, all connection between Israel and the Palestinian Authority regarding family unification was severed. In October 2007, Hamoked again filed a series of petitions in the High Court of Justice, calling for the resumption of family unification. Israel then announced that it would allow family unification as a "political gesture" (wherein lies the "gesture," and what makes it "political"? ) to the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. As of July 2008, 32,000 requests were approved, but only for families already living in the West Bank who lacked a permit. There was no solution for people living in exile.

Upon the assumption of power of the current right-wing government, in early 2009, family unification requests for the West Bank ceased to be dealt with altogether - which might come as news to those who brag about "improvement" in the conditions of the occupation under the Netanyahu government or under the (imaginary ) control by the PA of civil matters in the West Bank.

Nasser Daoud wanted to be a law-abiding citizen. That was the mistake of his life, a fatal error. In contrast to tens of thousands of Palestinians who remained in the West Bank without papers, he traveled to Jordan in 2000, intending to return legally. His wife and children remained in the family's home in Al-Karmel. Since then, all his requests to return to the West Bank, to the place where his father has a home and land, to the place where his wife and children live, have been turned down.

In 2008, when tens of thousands of requests were momentarily approved, he too was filled with hope. The PA's Ministry for Civil Affairs informed him in an official letter, in the name of President Abbas - "may God protect him," as the letter states - that his request for family unification had been approved. Authorization number: 500012384. That document now lies useless in the family's bag of papers: Israel did not endorse it and Nasser Daoud was not allowed to be reunited with his family.

In 1994, Nasser Daoud arrived in the West Bank from Kuwait, where he was born, to visit his family in Yatta and stayed until 2000. In 1997, he married Manal, from the neighboring village. He is now 37, she is 29, and they have four children: Khalil, 12; Dana, 10; Nur a-Din, 7; and Daoud, 5. The family says that Daoud is named for a Jewish friend of his forebears who lived in Yatta in the 1930s. Dana was 40 days old when her father left for Jordan. He hasn't been back since. Her two younger brothers were born after visits to Jordan by their mother.

For three years the family was completely separated. Then, in 2003, Manal and her children spent a year with their father in Jordan. Nasser lives in a tiny apartment in Amman, barely eking out a living as a peddler of underclothing, constantly harassed by city inspectors. The children had a hard time in Amman, and after a year returned home with their mother. Since then, they have visited their father a few more times for lengthy stays, a few months at a time. Their schooling is erratic, partly in Amman, partly in Al-Karmel.

Two years ago, Manal met Musa Abu Hashhash, the Hebron area fieldworker for B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and sought the organization's help, but to no avail. Last year, the family again moved to Jordan, until they returned to the West Bank two weeks ago. All their belongings are still stuffed into two huge tattered backpacks.

They host us in an uncle's home, apparently ashamed of their own meager dwelling. The mother and the four children now live in one room in the grandparents' home across the street, a shabby room in a shabby flat, with a sheep pen, a chicken coop, garbage and junk in the yard. Nasser's phone number in Jordan is written on the moldy wall. Manal, who obtained a matriculation certificate summa cum laude, did not go on to university because of her uncertain situation. Her mother, Intissar, sighs deeply as she relates this: All her children attended university; only Manal missed out.

Why did they come back again now? Manal says it's because of the children, who feel out of place in their father's slum neighborhood in Amman. Dana, wearing a pink Guess jersey, confirms what her mother says: "Here we know all the children, but in Jordan we don't know anyone." Grandmother Intissar adds that the school in Al-Karmel is better, too. The last time they spoke to their dad was when they were on the bus that took them back to the village, two weeks ago. Nasser just wanted to be sure that they got across the border safely. The phone calls are expensive, so they call only once a month, when Manal's father, Msalem, a schoolteacher, receives his salary. Msalem sighs: his son-in-law has land in Yatta and could build a house for the family here.

Once every six months Nasser submits a request to visit the West Bank to the Israeli Embassy in Amman, for which he pays 25 Jordanian dinars; once every six months his request is rejected. Little Daoud now asks his mother to ask us, the omnipotent Israelis, to bring him his father. Msalem says that all they want is to implement the approval the family received in 2008. He faults the PA for doing nothing to unify his family. Before the family returned, he bought two used beds for his daughter and grandchildren, and a second- or third-hand computer for NIS 200, its innards torn apart. Msalem swears that the fragments of the computer work; he will show us.

No response from the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories was received by press time.

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Israel's threat to deny visitors entry to Palestine is as disturbing as it is shocking. Our protest will be a civil society tsunami.

Sam Bahour

Palestinians have globally touted an array of rights that Israel systematically denies. There is the right of return, the right of freedom of movement, the right to water, the right to education, the right to enter (not to be confused with refugees' right to return) and so on.

But the right to receive visitors, or lack thereof? This is the most recent addition. The prohibition on freely receiving foreign visitors is as disturbing as it is shocking, especially for a country that claims to be the only beacon of democracy in the Middle East.

Yes, you read correctly. Israel is threatening to refuse to allow Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territory to receive visitors from abroad. We are not talking here about visitors such as the 5 million Palestinian refugees whom Israel has refused to allow to return to their homes after being expelled by force and fear when Israel was founded in 1948. Rather, the issue now is that foreigners who desire to visit the occupied Palestinian territory are being denied entry into Israel.

Remember, there is no other way to get to the Palestinian territory of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which is under military occupation by Israel, except by passing through Israeli-controlled points of entry such as Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv or one of Israel's sea ports or land crossings. The entry point to the Gaza Strip from the West Bank requires passage through Israel as well.

So, more than 300 international activists plan to arrive in Tel Aviv during the week of 8 July at the invitation of 30 Palestinian civil society organisations, to participate in an initiative named "Welcome to Palestine". Delegations from France, Great Britain, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, the USA, Japan and several African countries are expected.

Upon arrival at Ben Gurion airport, the invited guests, all from countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel, will make no secret of their intent to go to the occupied Palestinian territory. This nonviolent act, a civil society tsunami of sorts, only comes after Israel's restriction of movement and access to and from Palestine for Palestinians and foreigners has exhausted all established channels that carry the responsibility to uphold international law first and their domestic laws second.

The greatest inaction has come from the US state department, even though it has put on record, multiple times, the fact that Israel is discriminating at its borders against US citizens.

It is also worth noting that the 1951 Israel friendship, commerce and navigation treaty explicitly states: "There shall be freedom of transit through the territories of each Party by the routes most convenient for international transit …" and persons "in transit shall be exempt from … unreasonable charges and requirements; and shall be free from unnecessary delays and restrictions." So much for respecting signed agreements.

Israel, as a state and previously as a Zionist movement, has gone to every extreme to fragment and dispossess the Palestinian people. It has had accomplices every step of the way, starting with Great Britain and continuing to this very day with the US and the flock of UN member states that act more like parakeets to the US than sovereign states when it comes to Palestine.

Well, the game of inaction is coming to an end. When states fail, people take over. It is these people, like those coming to Palestine this week, or those attempting to reach the Israeli- blockaded Gaza Strip by sea, or those living in Palestine and resisting the occupation day in and day out, who will prove to historians once again that history is made of real people who have a keen sense of humanity and the courage to sacrifice.

• Sam Bahour is one of the co-ordinators of the Right to Enter Campaign.

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Sam Bahour - Photo

About Me

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American based in Al-Bireh/Ramallah, Palestine and is managing partner of Applied Information Management (AIM), which specializes in business development with a niche focus on start-ups and providing executive counsel.
Bahour was instrumental in the establishment of two publicly traded firms: the Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL) and the Arab Palestinian Shopping Center. He is currently an independent director at the Arab Islamic Bank, advisory board member of the Open Society Foundations’ Arab Regional Office, and completed a full term as a Board of Trustees member and treasurer at Birzeit University. In addition to his presidential appointment to serve as a general assembly member of the Palestine Investment Fund, Palestine’s $1B sovereign wealth fund, Bahour serves in various capacities in several community organizations, including co-founder and chairman of Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy, board member of Just Vision in New York, board member and policy adviser at Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, and secretariat member of the Palestine Strategy Group.